Friday, May 3, 2013

Some of my Favorite Recovery Meals

Exercise has always played an important role in my life and recently it's gotten even more important. I have some specific exercise plans and goals, which I regularly talk about here. However, something that I don't talk about that often is the fact that I exercise to eat. This is one of my guilty pleasures and today I'm going to share a few of my favorite things.

Main Dishes
We made this recently, but added roasted butternut squash - it was simply amazing. The squash added just the right amount of sweet without changing or overpowering the original flavor profile. Of course I think roasted butternut squash makes anything better, so keep that in mind. It would also be great with roasted sweet potatoes if you can't find good squash.

For the vegetarian readers, here is a great salad / main dish that we make all the time. Yes, I realize that the linked recipe calls for bacon and chicken stock but two quick substitutions and it's a vegetarian dish. As usual, we always add roasted sweet potatoes to this to make it even better.

Salads
These are two "go to" salads that we make whenever we can find good cantaloupes or watermelons. Both have a nice mix of carbs and protein, which make them good for recovery eating. Plus they taste great which is key in my book.

Dessert
I'm a dessert lover, so it only makes sense to include some of my favorite desserts. None of these are really recovery friendly, but since eating is one of the main reasons why I run (and bike and swim) I had to include these.

This torte was oh, so good and it only got better with age, so don't hesitate to make it in advance, if you can keep yourself from digging in early.

I am a huge fan of anything that is salty and sweet. I love chocolate covered pretzels and salted caramel anything. I know that blondies are all the rage right now, but these are actually worth calling out. Follow the original recipe and spring for the Maldon sea salt, it's worth it.

If you like chocolate and coffee you will love these. Seriously, like don't make them unless you don't mind eating them all, love them. They are little, crunchy, chewy, chocolate, coffee bites of joy. Don't say I didn't warn you.